Tag Archives: apocalyptic

Yesterday as we were house cleaning, I found a treasure trove of old bottles of sunscreen. At first I felt annoyed because have you bought any sunscreen lately? Highway robbery! Anyway, my second thought was, “hey, do we have sunscreen in the go-bag?” Upon investigation, I found that I had a small travel-type tube in the go bag. Trust me, there are way too many people in our family for that to be enough.

My mental image is one of those apocalyptic moments where my family has been forced to leave the shelter of our home and attempt to move out over great distances on foot. If you aren’t ready to go down the apocalyptic path just yet, then instead picture your family standing in an enormous line outside an emergency shelter hoping to score a few beds for the duration or standing in a mammoth line outside to obtain FEMA assistance. If you and your loved ones are out there for any of these reasons without sunscreen and you aren’t blessed with the natural ability to tan, then you’re cooking, and the last thing you need at that moment is a sunburn. Somehow I figure baking yourselves into proverbial pork rinds will seem ridiculous afterwards when all you needed to do was pack some sunscreen.

Your next question is, “Does sunscreen expire?”. Unfortunately, yes but I think the shelf life is reasonable. According to the Mayo clinic:

“Sunscreens are designed to remain stable and at original strength for up to three years.”

Later in the article, they note that extreme temperatures, over long periods of time can speed up this process of degradation. But as I’ve mentioned before, your go-kit should be located within your home in an easily accessible place, not in your sweltering garage.

I would also like to recommend a small tube of sunscreen for your work go-kits. If you ever find yourself having to walk over great distances to get home from work due to a regional event that might clog roads to the point of abandoning cars or if you are for some reason unable to retrieve your vehicle from work and forced to walk homewards, you will want some sunscreen. I would also recommend sunscreen for your car go-kits. However, you will need to rotate this iteration after every summer because of the heat/storage issue. A simple and cost-effective suggestion would be to take this summer’s leftover sunscreen and use that bottle for your car and just make that a tradition. At the end of each summer season, at least one unfinished container replaces the old bottle in the car go-kit. This will put you on a schedule and keep you from putting a brand new bottle in the car just to have to toss it next season.

Don’t make your apocalyptic event an adventure in becoming a pork rind. Embrace the almighty SPF! Get some sunscreen stashed away for a sunny, emergency day.

If you are thinking of really embracing the prepper mentality then you will eventually begin to consider l-o-n-g term survival needs. This would be catastrophic, life changing, world may never be the same type scenarios. When you begin to plan for this level of survival, you will open up a whole new can of worms for preparedness topics. These are things that you would not really consider for your go-kits or even your traditional shelter in place kits. So on this Friday eve when we are all a little more laid back in anticipation of a Friday :-), l’m going to mention a few things that under normal circumstances we wouldn’t want to actually discuss. But trust me…under apcalyptic rules, you would want to have some of these items.

So here goes…please consider whether or not you would really like to get pregnant during these circumstances. Not that we as a race would never want to procreate again, but don’t you think you might want to be a little choosy on this one? Shortly after a catastrophic event, you would have a serious decline in medical care and nutritional options. Both of these areas would make it a less than ideal circumstance to create a new life. So, have an alternate form of birth control. Ladies, Walgreen’s won’t be hitting your automatic refill on those pills. Men, might rather wear a condom during such a period of time. Just consider it. (If you are, shall we say “unable” to procreate for whatever reason, then congratulations, do your thing 🙂 and move on to the next section.)

Next, should you choose to disregard the first point, would you like to be able to care for your new baby? Because lets face it, with no TV, nine to five job, or other form of alternative entertainment your lovin numbers are going to skyrocket. And your baby shower will not consist of a baby registry from your local Babies R Us. No ma’am, you are getting canned pears and used teddy bears. If nature nor scalpel have taken your procreation options yet, you might want to have just a few of the really vital baby care items. Consider purchasing even a basic set of cloth diapers and the coordinating needed supplies. Also think of things such as bottles and nipples. If this seems unrealistic given your lack of desire to reproduce…I suggest you re-read the previous paragraph.

Lastly for today, (we may revisit this type of topic later), LADIES…without your local Walgreens, your birth control pills are not the only things you aren’t getting. Unless you are able to pray yourself straight into menopause, you’re going to need feminine hygiene products. And, men, don’t freak out and skip this part because if your wife is not a prepper and therefore not going to do her own planning, I guess you better. As much as you don’t like this topic on a sunny day, catch your lady without her supplies and it will be pretty impossible to ignore. Also, ladies (and men) even if you are cycle exempt, if you have daughters (of any age) this will at some point be applicable to them as well. So moving on, you need to purchase a basic stock of washable sanitary pads. Yes, you can get those. (Wrap up your freak out, it is what it is.) I realize you could easily just buy a boat load of the traditional supplies, but again tonight we are talking absolute catastrophic event. You cannot reasonably tell me how many pads/tampons you would need for an undetermined amount of time. Do you really think Tampax, Kotex, or Always are going to be one of the first products to return to production and achieve supply chain success? Me neither, so stock up now on what seems unreasonable, but would in fact be invaluable.

There I”ve done it. I talked about sex and periods all at once. Do with it what you will. 😉